


baby please come home

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, M/M, Strangers to Lovers, mall elf karkat, middle aged davekat...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:48:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27275194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Why would they get a comedian to be Santa, anyway?” Karkat downed the rest of his hot chocolate and tossed the Styrofoam cup into a candy cane-striped garbage can, trying not to think about either sugar or climate change. “Since when is Santa supposed to be funny.”“I mean, he’s jolly, right?”“Maybe he’s just the type of asshole who laughs at his own jokes.”
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	baby please come home

**Author's Note:**

> posted this a while ago and then took it down but here it is again! now w minor edits lol
> 
> also i noticed an inconsistency where i mentioned dave being an only child but also later implied that rose was his sister so i fixed that and made her his cousin ~__~

Standing in the dingy mall restroom and staring at his reflection, covered in green felt and jingle bells, Karkat wondered if there had ever been a more sadistic example of a bait-and-switch.

When his boss had conspicuously re-forwarded him the annual Santaland benefit’s call for assistance, along with a pointed note (“ _Noticed you haven’t recorded any volunteer time this quarter!”_ ), Karkat had imagined spending an afternoon addressing thank you notes to donors. He had worried, briefly, that he might be asked to do crowd control. He certainly had not imagined being handed a plastic bag labeled “Elf - Adult Male” and being told to go change.

Karkat shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to find a position in which the seam of his red velvet breeches would sit comfortably. He only succeeded in getting his tights even more awkwardly twisted, and swore under his breath. The bells on the ends of his pointed shoes jingled softly.

“Fuck this,” Karkat said firmly to his reflection. He was an adult man with a job and some modicum of self-respect, however small it may be. No one could force him to prance around in an elf costume for a bunch of screaming kids, and if that’s what it took to get the promotion, the promotion could go fuck itself. His mind made up, Karkat scrabbled at the plastic belt buckle cinching his green felt jacket together, trying to rip it free.

The sound of a flushing toilet made him jump. A tall and tired-looking man about Karkat’s age emerged from a stall. In the mirror, Karkat saw the man take in his costume with open amusement, a grin on his face and his eyebrows raised behind dark aviators. Karkat scowled and continued yanking ineffectively at his pleather belt.

The guy stepped up to the line of sinks and started washing his hands. “You sure that thing actually works, dude?” he said.

Their gazes met in the mirror, and for one moment, Karkat had the weirdest feeling of deja vu, and then he blinked, and it passed, and he was looking at a scruffy stranger in a public bathroom.

“What?”

The man carried on. “You know you’re zipped in, right?”

Karkat reached over his shoulder and touched the zipper at the back of his neck. “Right.” He glanced at the guy again, who, annoyingly, was clearly trying to stifle a laugh. “Look,” he said irritably, “I’m just volunteering, all right? It’s not like this shit’s part of my office dress code.”

“Right,” the guy said, nodding seriously. “Of course.”

Honestly, Karkat thought, this dude had no room to comment on anyone’s apparel when he himself was wearing sunglasses indoors and a t-shirt depicting a rosy-cheeked goose in a chef’s hat under bright lettering that said “MEE-MAW’S 80th BIRTHDAY BONANZA!”

“I didn’t even know I’d be doing this,” Karkat muttered, turning back to the mirror. “I thought I’d— I dunno. Take fucking pictures or something.”

“Got it,” the guy said, turning off the water and reaching for a paper towel. “And now you’re on elf duty, you wanna bail on a benefit for little kids with ebola. Et cetera.”

“I—” Karkat spluttered, “that’s not fucking—”

“Hey, man, I’m just picking up what you’re laying down!” The guy tossed his paper towel in the trash and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the sink. “I mean, I get it. Fuck them kids, right?”

Karkat crossed his arms as well and stood up to his full height, though the guy was still a head taller. “Hey, fuck you, asshole. You don’t know me, all right?”

But the man was laughing. “Relax. I’m messing with you. Yanking your tinsel? Whatever. You want a hand with that?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Karkat snapped with all the dignity he could muster. “I can handle a zipper.”

“Okay,” said the guy, palms up in surrender. “Live your life, man. I’m just sayin’, it’s only a couple hours. Might be easier to go with it than to start something with the supreme elf on high or whatever the fuck.”

“Pretty sure that’s just Santa.”

“Oh yeah? Good for him.”

The guy was grinning again, and Karkat caught a glimpse of his white but slightly crooked front teeth. He looked away quickly, back at his own ridiculous reflection.

“A couple of hours, huh,” he huffed, tugging on his faux-fur collar.

“Just something to think about.” The guy combed a hand through his mess of blonde dreads. “Anyway, I gotta get to work. See you around.”

He sauntered out of the bathroom without a backward glance. Karkat stared at the bathroom door for a moment, chewing his lip, and then looked down at his costume.

“A couple of hours,” he said to himself, nodding in encouragement.

He exhaled heavily and reached back into the plastic costume bag for his pointy green hat. He jammed it onto his head, squared his shoulders, and marched out of the bathroom to meet his fate.

* * *

The scene outside was a nightmare of holiday cheer. Karkat had been in Santaland for about an hour (half of which had been dedicated to the mortifying experience of learning, along with a dozen other delighted-looking volunteers, something called “the North Pole boogie”), but the sight was still a shock.

It was a bloodthirsty assault to the senses, stuffed with plastic evergreens, candy cane pillars, and huge sparkly snowflakes dangling every few feet. A toy train ran along on a suspended track overhead, and everywhere he turned there was a larger-than-life nutcracker or a grinning snowman that Karkat, for one, found profoundly disquieting.

“This is fun, isn’t it?” Karkat’s coworker Bryan said delightedly, in the five minute break they had been allowed between elven dance lessons. Bryan was the only guy from Karkat’s department who’d been wrangled into this debacle along with him, but somehow he’d been spared the indignity of a costume. Instead, he was wearing a bright green t-shirt emblazoned with the Santaland logo and an ominous “Questions? ASK ME!”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you had to lip sync ‘We Are Santa’s Elves’ in front of a horde of schoolchildren.”

They were sitting on a bench whimsically painted to look covered in snow, beneath an old-timey signpost pointing, apparently, to the North Pole. In reality, the sign pointed to the far end of the room, where Santa’s as-yet unoccupied velvet armchair sat nestled between tinsel-covered trees.

“Are you kidding? I’m kinda jealous!” Bryan enthused. Karkat took a swig of his shitty complimentary hot chocolate to stop himself from grimacing. “Plus, hey, did you hear who they got to be Santa this year?”

“I assume some random ex-convict.”

“No way, broski!” Bryan glanced furtively around their vicinity like he really thought someone would be trying to eavesdrop on this abysmal conversation. “I mean, they try to keep it on the D.L. because, like, the kids gotta think it’s really Santa, right? But it’s always some celebrity. Country musicians and soap actors, that kind of thing. But word on the street is, this year it’s Dave Strider!”

Karkat frowned. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

Bryan went bug-eyed. “Oh, come on, man! He’s a comedian! He’s based in the city— that bit about teaching your pervert dog how to swim? You’ve never seen that?”

In truth, Karkat thought the name had rung the faintest bell, but he couldn’t put a face to it. “I dunno, I’m not really into stand-up.”

“Oh, bro, you’re missing out!” Bryan said, shaking his head. Karkat doubted this very much.

“Why would they get a comedian to be Santa, anyway?” Karkat downed the rest of his hot chocolate and tossed the Styrofoam cup into a candy cane-striped garbage can, trying not to think about either sugar or climate change. “Since when is Santa supposed to be funny.”

“I mean, he’s jolly, right?”

“Maybe he’s just the type of asshole who laughs at his own jokes.”

“Maybe so,” Bryan conceded, squinting down the hallway. Then his eyes went round. “Look alive,” he whisper-shouted, and smacked Karkat’s arm with the back of his hand before springing to his feet.

“Ow.” Karkat rubbed his arm and followed Bryan’s gaze. A gaggle of crazed-looking store employees was hustling towards them, surrounding a tall but unusually thin Santa like members of the secret service. Karkat stayed sitting as they pushed past, Bryan standing at rigid attention.

The group made their way to the platform, one young woman still fussing with Santa’s beard. Karkat squinted at him— there was something familiar about those stupid sunglasses. Halfway up the stairs to Santa’s armchair, the man’s head swiveled and landed in Karkat’s direction. In one movement, he grabbed the end of his beard and tugged it down, revealing a five o’clock shadow and a huge grin.

Karkat froze.

“Hey!” the guy shouted, waving wildly at Karkat over the head of the young woman, who was now staring at the dangling beard in open alarm. “You stayed!”

Out of pure instinct, Karkat spun around and started fiddling with the ornaments on the tree behind him.

“Bro,” Bryan breathed. “You know him?”

“No!” Karkat hissed. “I do _not_ know him! I just know he was acting like a real dickmunch in the bathroom.”

“You talked to Dave Strider in a mall bathroom?”

“ _Apparently_! Is he still looking over here?”

“He absolutely is,” Bryan said gleefully.

Karkat steeled himself and turned back around. The man— Dave Strider— was in Santa’s chair now, the young woman working furiously to reapply the beard with a tube of what Karkat could only assume was glue. But Dave Strider was still looking toward him, and still grinning moronically.

“Few screws loose in that one,” Karkat muttered.

“He’s a comedian, it’s part of the gig,” Bryan said knowingly.

Karkat opened his mouth to ask if they were sure Dave Strider was cleared to work with children, but he was cut off by the booming voice of the volunteer coordinator, shouting through a megaphone for the elves to get in position.

Wishing he were dead, Karkat got to his feet and trudged to the stairs leading up to Santa’s chair, avoiding Dave Strider’s pointed gaze. He and the other dozen elves stood on either side of the chair; the elf woman next to Karkat was wringing her hands in apparent nervousness, and Karkat rolled his eyes.

“Okay, quiet down, everyone!” the volunteer coordinator barked through a megaphone. “Listen up for your placements. Everyone from you to you, you’re on greeter duty. You and you, I need patrolling Santaland and answering questions. And you two,” she finished, nodding to Karkat and the woman next to him, “you get to be personal assistants to Santa himself. Congratulations.”

Karkat felt his jaw fall open an inch. But the elves around him were dispersing quickly, and he pulled himself together enough to follow the nervous-looking woman, who was heading towards the Santa station.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?” he whispered to her, and she shot him a look of disdain.

“We’re the ones who take the kids up to Santa,” she said. “Ask them if they’ve been good, if they’re excited to see him. It was all in the training this morning.”

“Right,” said Karkat, who had spent the training fantasizing dully about going home and making soup.

At the bottom of the platform, the woman paused. “So, one of us should stay here, and entertain the kids while they wait....” She gave Karkat a dubious look.

“You do that,” he said at once. “I don’t care, I’ll just....”

She smiled gratefully. “You can help them get into Santa’s lap.”

“Great.” Karkat glanced up at the platform, where Dave Strider was stroking his fluffy white beard theatrically. Karkat squared his shoulders and went to join him, taking his position to the left of Santa’s chair.

“Hey, dude,” Dave said. “Glad you stuck with the costume, it’s working for you.”

“That makes one of us,” Karkat grumbled, ignoring the faint prickle of heat he felt in his cheeks. He wondered for a moment if he should be speaking respectfully, considering Dave Strider was, apparently, a celebrity— and then, realizing he had no real inclination nor desire to do so, dismissed the thought. “Yours looks about four sizes too big.”

Dave Strider glanced down at his Santa suit. “I did tell them I was gonna put on weight for the role. You know, like Christian Bale, get really method about it. I didn’t think they’d take me seriously.”

“You tried to play a game of chicken with Macy’s and lost? Hard life.”

“Yeah, yeah. And what are you so trim for?” Dave looked Karkat up and down. “You must be a standing desk guy, huh. Or do they have you doing triathlons and elf duty?”

“Nothing wrong with staying active, jackass.”

“Hey, man, you don’t gotta justify yourself to me. I’ve just never met a treadmill I didn’t nearly puke on.”

Karkat’s lips twitched, despite the fact that the image was objectively not funny. He opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the harshly amplified voice of the volunteer coordinator shouting through the megaphone.

“Attention, everyone! We’ve got a line out the door, and these kids are full of holiday cheer! Hope you’re all ready to make this the greatest Santaland yet. We’ll be opening the doors in ten! Nine! Eight!”

The double doors leading into Santaland burst open, and a flood of kids and parents started pouring in. There were shrieks of delight as the kids caught sight of Santa, who waved back at them with almost equal enthusiasm.

“Ugh, god, they’re cute,” Dave Strider said quietly. “You have any kids?”

“Uh, no,” Karkat said, blinking in alarm at the idea. “I’m not much of a fan, actually.”

“No kidding?” Dave glanced at him, his white mustache twitching with a suppressed grin.

“Oh, fuck off,” Karkat whispered. Then, for some reason, he asked, “Do you? Have kids, I mean?”

“No,” Dave said, almost wistfully. “I love them, but I can’t be trusted around them, you know? Wouldn’t last five minutes without dropping them or teaching them how to say fuck.”

“I can see why they gave you the job.”

“Yeah, I left that little tidbit out of the interview.”

Karkat snorted, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, mortified. The movement caught the attention of the volunteer coordinator, who shot him a murderous look and drew her finger across her own throat threateningly.

“Holy shit,” Dave murmured. “Watch out, dude, she’s not playing around. She’s gonna be waiting for you in the parking lot after this.”

By then the kids and their parents were mostly seated, and Karkat groaned inwardly as the music began playing over the loudspeakers. Elves from all corners of Santaland climbed up to the platform, idiotically bouncing their way into position around Dave’s chair. Karkat pinched his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and, along with the other elves, started the dance.

“Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho! We are Santa’s elves!”

In sync with the costumed volunteers to either side of him, Karkat turned in a circle, waved his arms over his head, kicked out his feet to jingle the little bells at the end of his shoes.

“We’ve a toy for each girl and boy, oh, we are Santa’s elves!”

The entire time, Dave Strider waved his white gloved forefingers like a conductor, laughing merrily in a way that didn’t even seem to be acting.

When the music finally ended and the kids burst into shrieks and applause, Dave stood up, clapping his hands.

“Thank you, elves, thank you!” His Santa voice was significantly deeper than it had been when he was talking to Karkat. The change was so surreal, Karkat had to work to keep his face neutral. “What a jolly song and dance to welcome you all to Santaland. I’m so glad to see so many bright young faces smiling back at me!”

Karkat didn’t think this could get any cornier, but the kids were loving it. They broke out into another round of cheers as the elves on crowd control encouraged them into a long line.

“Now, my elves will lead you up one by one to sit on my lap, and you can tell me what you’d like for Christmas. Sound good?”

The families applauded gleefully, and Karkat dug frantically through his consciousness for a perfectly neutral thought that he could use as an anchor for his sanity. Soup, he reminded himself. He was going to go home and have some lentil soup after this.

The first kids in line were two pink-faced sisters, shoving each other bodily in their eagerness to see Santa. The volunteer at the bottom of the platform handed them off to Karkat, and he took them by their sticky hands and led them up the stairs.

“Ho ho ho!” Dave opened his arms to the girls. “Now, which of you girls would like to tell me what you want for Christmas?”

It was, Karkat thought, a pretty stupid question to ask two kids who were clearly about two seconds away from ripping each other’s limbs off if it meant getting dibs on Santa. Right on cue, the older girl wrenched free from Karkat’s grasp, elbowed her sister in the stomach, and clambered up the remaining stairs. The younger girl, still clinging to Karkat’s hand, collapsed to the ground and burst into tears.

“Jesus,” Karkat muttered, and then realized that was probably not what a Christmas elf was supposed to say. The older girl had made it to Dave’s lap, and Dave was bouncing her on his knee, looking on the scene with evident bewilderment.

“Well, now,” Dave said awkwardly, his artificially deep Santa voice just this side of strained. “Don’t you want to apologize to your sister?”

“No,” the girl said placidly. “I want Elsa’s Lego ice palace.”

Karkat was standing at an uncomfortable angle, dragged down by the dead weight of the little girl sobbing on the carpet. He squatted down next to her.

“Come on,” he said. “You’ve gotta get up now.”

“ _I hate her!_ ” the girl wailed.

“Okay,” Karkat said, calmly. “Well, it’s my arm you’re trying to rip off. I’m not the person you’re mad at, am I?”

The girl blinked up at him seriously, her tears slowing. Wiping her nose roughly with the back of her hand, she scrambled to her feet. Karkat led her the rest of the way up to Santa’s chair, mentally attempting to locate the closest bottle of Purell.

“Make room,” he said sternly to the girl already on Dave’s lap. “You guys are about two feet tall each, there’s room for you both.”

He picked the girl up at the waist and set her down on Dave’s unoccupied knee. Dave looked up at him, eyebrows raised. Karkat held his gaze, crossing his arms and stepping back.

“Tell him what you want for Christmas,” he said.

“iPad!” the younger girl squealed.

“iPad,” Dave said thoughtfully. “Interesting choice. What say you, uh, Rudy? Think the team can handle it?”

Karkat pressed his lips together as Dave shot him a presumably apologetic look. He supposed that’s what he got for failing to introduce himself. “We’ll see what we can do,” he said evenly.

“Well, there you have it,” Dave said loudly to the girls, who had started screeching at each other over who got the iPad. “All right, girls, Merry Christmas indeed!”

When the girls slid off his lap, Karkat didn’t miss the look of relief on Dave’s face.

Thankfully, most of the day went more smoothly. There were a few crying kids (including, memorably, three tiny triplets who started wailing in harmony the moment they caught sight of Dave’s bearded shades-adorned face), but Karkat found it wasn’t too hard to keep things moving. Most of the time, all you needed was to tell a kid they were fine, and they’d suddenly realize they really were fine.

Karkat supposed the good thing about the overall chaos of the event was that it made the time pass quickly. He was almost surprised when the crowd control elves began shepherding kids out of the Santaland room, and it wasn’t much longer before the place was cleared of everyone but staff and volunteers.

Luckily there wasn’t much cleanup to be done, as the space wouldn’t be torn down until after the holidays, but Karkat and the other elves were still made to go around picking up the odd empty juice box and candy wrapper.

“Wow, what a day, huh?” Bryan said, approaching Karkat with an armful of tinsel.

“Yeah,” Karkat said absently. He bent to pick up a pile of what looked like discarded paper snowflakes, and when he straightened back up, Bryan was looking wide-eyed at something over his shoulder.

“Karkat,” he hissed. “ _Dude_ , be cool. Dave Strider is coming over here, be cool!”

“ _You_ be fucking cool, jesus.”

“Hey,” said a familiar voice behind him.

Karkat turned around. Dave’s Santa costume, and, of course, shades were still on, but the beard was gone; Karkat could see a bit of dried glue clinging to the stubble on his upper lip.

“Hey,” Karkat said, coolly.

“Hi, I’m Bryan!” Bryan said loudly, holding out his hand. Dave took it awkwardly.

“Dave.” He nodded at Bryan and then looked back at Karkat. “Hey, listen,” he said. “I, uh, I wanted to send a picture of myself in costume to some friends.... I mean, I know there are like, professional photographers and shit here, but I wanna go for something a little less, like, staged, you know? Would you mind?”

“Oh,” Karkat said, hesitating. “Fine, yeah. You got a phone?”

“Nah, turns out Santa’s not allowed to have a cell phone on his person. He’s a retro kinda dude. You mind using yours and sending it to me?”

“My phone’s got a really nice camera,” Bryan offered. “It’s a Google Pixel, the night sight mode is sick—”

“That’s okay,” Dave said, grinning as he turned back to Karkat. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Right,” Karkat said. “Yeah, okay, let’s, uh, let’s find you a nice backdrop.”

“Nice to meet you, dude,” Dave said pleasantly when Bryan took a step in their direction.

Karkat shot an apologetic look over his shoulder as he and Dave headed towards the Santa platform.

“Sorry for being a dick to your friend,” Dave said as they weaved through the busy throng of elves and green-shirted volunteers. Karkat waited for Dave to make an excuse, but he didn’t.

“He’s not, uh, my friend,” Karkat said awkwardly.

Dave shot him a sideways look. “Well, anyway. Appreciate it.”

They had to stop in their tracks as a couple of burly men hauled an enormous live Christmas tree past them.

“You were good with the kids, you know,” Dave told him. “For someone who claims not to be a fan. Seems like they respond well to being spoken to like adults.”

Karkat glanced up to see Dave grinning at him. “Figures, I guess.” He shrugged. “You seemed a little less than comfortable with them. For someone who claims to be a fan.”

“Dude, oh my god! Why was I so awkward with them? None of them liked me, it’s like they could sense my fear. I think here’s good, yeah?”

He stood on the steps leading up to Santa’s armchair, one foot several steps above the other, hands on his hips in a triumphant pose.

“Great stuff,” Karkat said, taking out his phone and opening the camera. Dave’s first pose wasn’t the only one he had up his sleeve— several of the pictures were blurry because he kept changing his mind and doing something else too quickly.

“Hold still,” Karkat ordered him. “Just angle yourself, like....” He took a step towards Dave and put his hands on his shoulders, turning him gently. Dave let himself be moved, unexpectedly quiet.

“Good,” Karkat said. He stepped back, positioned the phone carefully, and snapped a picture. “That’s the one.”

“Do I get to see my options?”

“I said it’s the one.”

“All right, have it your way, Annie Leibovitz.” Dave held out his hand. “Lemme put my number on your phone. So you can text me the winner.”

“Sure,” Karkat said, somewhat warily, although it wasn’t like he had anything even remotely titillating on his phone. He placed it in Dave’s outstretched hand.

“What’s your name, by the way? Not Rudy, I’m guessing.”

“Definitely not Rudy.”

“Sorry, man, I panicked. I was thinking, like, North Pole, Rudolph, Rudy—”

“I get it,” Karkat grumbled. “Though if that’s your improv game, I’m impressed you’ve gotten this far.” Dave clapped a hand to his chest like he’d been shot in the heart and Karkat rolled his eyes.

“I’m Karkat,” he said. “Karkat Vantas.”

“Karkat Vantas,” Dave repeated slowly, grinning around it. For a moment the grin flickered and his eyebrows contracted, but then he shook his head slightly, and the expression was gone. “I’m Dave,” he said, inclining his head awkwardly like he knew the introduction wasn’t necessary.

“I know,” Karkat told him. “Not because I, like, knew who you were before today, though.”

“No?” Dave huffed out a laugh. “That’s a relief, actually.”He grinned down at Karkat for a moment, and then he twitched, and seemed to remember what he’d been doing. “Well, nice to meet you, Karkat,” he said, looking back down at the phone and starting to type.

It did not, perhaps, feel entirely normal for a celebrity of any status to be giving his phone number out to random strangers. But nothing about Dave Strider felt like what Karkat would expect from a celebrity. He seemed, mostly, like a _guy_. Like a guy Karkat would know, which was a weird thought in itself, because it wasn’t true— he did not know anyone at all like Dave.

Karkat’s phone dinged as he rode the N train home, and he opened to a picture message from a contact named “Dave Claus.” When he clicked to download the image, he was rewarded with a selfie of Dave Strider in a makeshift-looking dressing room, with one tiny jingle bell shoved up each nostril. Karkat tried not to yelp.

**THIS IS VERY DISTURBING. PLEASE DON’T INHALE THOSE AND DIE.**

_aw touched to hear you care_

**FUCK NO. I JUST DON’T THINK I COULD HANDLE THE SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT.**

_oh trust me itd be first hand_

_my obituary would be like_

_b-list comedian dave strider dead at 37 in ill fated attempt to freak out local elf_

Karkat lowered his phone and scrubbed his hands over his face, hiding his smile from the rest of the train.

* * *

Karkat hadn’t come to New York to star on Broadway or to write for a big magazine or whatever it was that starry-eyed dropouts dreamed about. His life was pragmatic, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t good. It was good. Even the worst days were fine. The best days were fine, too, come to think of it, but that was better than the disappointed hopes and heartbreak some people found in the city.

It had been years since Karkat had decided that the idea of “making it big” was just a way to keep romanticizing the city, even as it took your money and spat on your feet. He knew he was lucky— he made decent money, good enough to live with a level of comfort most New Yorkers never attained. But he wasn’t some big artist or rising celebrity. He wasn’t, in short, Dave Strider.

Dave, it turned out, was an extremely bad, if enthusiastic, texter. Karkat supposed that’s what they’d been doing the past few days: texting. They had been texting like it was an actual activity, consuming and continuous, not at all like the one-off back-and-forth Karkat had anticipated. Karkat wasn’t sure who could be blamed for how it had evolved. He’d read their chat three times, trying and failing to pinpoint the moment it had morphed from light jokes between strangers into the never-ending Hydra of a conversation he now had before him.

On the train, at his kitchen table in the morning, in the office bathroom— all of a sudden, Karkat’s every available moment was spent on his phone. Even in the most mundane parts of his day, Dave Strider always had something to say.

 _what do you think this means,_ Dave would text, attaching a blurry image of a road sign featuring one large question mark.

And Karkat would offer three or four (or five or six) suggestions ( **CAUTION, CONFUSING ROAD WORK AHEAD** ; **MAYBE IT’S A METAPHOR** ; **THE IDIOT MAKING THE SIGN FORGOT WHAT THEY WERE DOING** ). If Dave responded within a minute, that meant it was a good day.

That being said, Dave’s texting could be infuriating. Sometimes he’d leave Karkat hanging for hours, to the point where Karkat would begin over-analyzing his own last message, wondering if he’d said something stupid, or worse, something too boring to merit a response. But then, after so long without a word, he would finally respond in one of two ways: by continuing where Karkat had left off, with no explanation whatsoever for his absence; or with something like _sorry dropped my phone off the fire escape and had to go dumpster diving for it lmao._ Regardless of the response, Karkat found himself waiting for it eagerly until it came. He’d check his phone even when it didn’t ding, and would jump in surprise when it did— though half the time this resulted in disappointment when it turned out to be just a push notification from MyFitnessPal or the BuzzFeed app.

Anyway. Karkat wasn’t stupid. It only took a few days for him to pull himself out of his cozy state of denial and accept what his nervous system was telling him. He knew what this could become if he wasn’t careful, and that was something he certainly didn’t need right now. He hadn’t dated anyone since breaking up with his ex last year— after that shitshow, he’d all but sworn it off.

It was all beside the point, anyway, at least where Dave was concerned. Karkat had spent more time than he’d care to admit watching YouTube videos of his stand-up, and was disappointed if unsurprised to learn that much of it was about, or at least mentioned, his girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, and/or random (female) hookups.

“You think dating fans is gonna be fun, but no one tells you it’s actually freaky,” Dave had begun in one bit from 2009, a grin spreading across his sharp features as the audience hooted. “It’s like a whole new kink— I’m tryna be nice, right, letting her know I’ll keep our private life private, but you know there’s some kinda subliminal S&M shit going on when a girl is like, ‘Roast me, Daddy. Do it onstage, I want everyone to know!’ What would you do? I gotta oblige, right? So yeah, her farts are fuckin’ rank, man. That’s the joke.” At that point Karkat had calmly closed his laptop and left his apartment to take a walk around the block, if not the entirety of Astoria.

So he was trying to be chill about the whole thing. He was trying not to overthink the possible explanations for why an at-least-somewhat famous comedian would want to spend hours of the day texting him, and he was trying not to catalogue all the many ways those texts might eventually be a detriment to his own mental and emotional state. Maybe, in this new stage of his life, Karkat could even learn to enjoy surreality. Take life as it came. Maybe that would be healthy.

At least, that was what he told himself when Dave invited him to come see one of his shows ( _ill comp tix if you promise to laugh really hard at the bad jokes the guy who usually does that is getting his appendix out_ ).

This time, Karkat was the one to leave the text unanswered for an eternity, though he imagined Dave didn’t spend that time pacing around his apartment, questioning his own judgement and standards of self-respect. Finally, after Dave prompted him with a string of question marks, Karkat wrote back.

**I PROMISE TO LAUGH IF IT’S FUNNY.**

_thats not what i asked for but ok_

* * *

It felt only fair to bring Bryan, being the one real Dave Strider fan that Karkat knew. It occurred to him, as he waved Bryan over outside the Comedy Cellar, that Karkat really didn’t have any more claim on Dave than Bryan did. They had met on the same day, after all— and hell, Karkat hadn’t even known who Dave was. By the time they made it down the stairs to the underground club and settled at their cocktail table near the stage, Bryan had quoted three of Dave’s bits, and Karkat had gotten himself into a decidedly sour mood.

“Hey,” Karkat interrupted him halfway through explaining some punchline or other, “no offense, but I don’t think anyone in all of history has ever successfully re-told a joke. You might be wasting your breath.”

Bryan laughed good-naturedly. “Shit, man, you’re probably right.”

“I just don’t wanna, like, get sick of his stuff before the show starts, you know?” he added, a bit more amiably.

“Oh, as if, man. You’re gonna love this. This is where good comedians come— like, Seinfeld and shit.”

Karkat, who detested Seinfeld, chose not to respond to this. Instead, he peered around them, watching the other tables steadily fill up. He wondered if any of these people had seen one of Dave’s shows before, and in the next moment thought, rather vindictively, that even if they had, surely none of them had spent hours texting with him about the mundanities of everyday life. Which was a petty-ass thought to have, jesus fucking christ, and proved he needed to either drink away this mood or get his shit together. Preferably both.

He sighed in relief when the lights dimmed and the audience broke into applause. A wide spotlight faded in, illuminating the stool and microphone stand in the middle of the small stage, and the stretch of exposed brick wall behind it. The applause morphed quickly into hoots and cheers, and in the next moment a curtain on the side of the stage rustled, and Dave stepped onstage. Bryan put his fingers in his mouth and whistled enthusiastically, and Karkat had to suppress the urge to throw a handful of bar peanuts at him.

Dave looked— well, if Karkat was being honest, he looked _good_. Or at least he cleaned up well. He was wearing a red suit jacket over black jeans and a white t-shirt, which bore no references to Mee-Maw’s or anyone else’s birthday bonanza. He’d shaved more recently than he had the day Karkat met him, though the five o’clock shadow was still there and his dreads were still a mess. The stage lights reflected off his shades as he grinned and waved out at the audience.

The cheers showed no sign of dissipating as he approached the microphone; he motioned for them to quiet down, then seemed to change his mind and waved his arms upward, urging them on. The people around Karkat hooted and laughed, and Bryan punched his arm enthusiastically, raising his eyebrows and mouthing, _See?_

As the cheers finally quieted, Dave looked around the crowd, grinning at everyone, not saying anything. He grinned so widely and stared so long that the laughter started to pick up again. There was a point when his gaze, which had previously been sweeping across the room, fixed on Karkat.

His grin didn’t budge, but Karkat’s stomach swooped.

“So,” Dave said, gaze still holding Karkat’s. “I’ve been pissing in a lot of public fountains lately.”

It was a weird set. Or maybe Karkat just didn’t know a lot about comedy. But Dave seemed to thrive in the longest, messiest metaphors and most awkward beats, leaning into them, making fun of himself instead of the audience. At one point, he sank down onto his stomach and spent a full agonizing minute dragging himself across the floor (“Can you imagine if a worm tried to do the worm? Fucked up we call it that when everyone knows they’re nature’s worst dancers”); at another, he hit himself repeatedly in the head with his own microphone, something about not understanding astrology and being followed by overenthusiastic shooting stars.

Karkat only realized how much he was laughing when Bryan caught his eye and grinned approvingly. It wasn’t really that funny, surely— but there was something striking about watching Dave get stupid with it, get physical and goofy and completely without pride. At least to Karkat, who had spent the past three years of his life going to the annual office karaoke party only to have one drink and firmly refuse to take the mic.

He had assumed there’d be some sort of finale, or something— like when the Fourth of July fireworks got bigger and faster, and you knew the end was coming soon to blow you out of the water, or at least try. But instead, forty-five minutes after taking the stage, Dave finished a bit about star-nosed moles and in the next breath was saying, “Thanks for coming out, everyone. ’Night!”

The crowd went wild as he waved and left the stage; half the room got to its feet, Bryan included. The lights came up and the applause died down, and no sooner had Bryan said “Wow, right?” than Karkat felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned around in his seat to see a young woman wearing a headset leaning down towards him.

“Mr. Strider would like to invite you two backstage.”

“Oh, uh— yeah, sure,” Karkat said, while Bryan grabbed his shoulder in a death grip of excitement.

The woman led them backstage through a dimly lit hallway, to a door marked Makeup. She knocked briskly and pushed the door open without waiting for a response.

“Thanks, Hannah,” Karkat heard, and then the door swung open fully, and there was Dave Strider, getting to his feet and smiling in a way that was just as enthusiastic as the grin he gave onstage, but different in a way Karkat couldn’t quite explain.

Immediately, Karkat felt a little bit warm.

“Hey, man,” Dave said, stepping over and clapping him warmly on the shoulder. Karkat had worried it would be strange, seeing him after the two weeks of texting, and it was, kind of, but in a good way. Dave looked comfortable, happy to see him. He looked over Karkat’s shoulder, nodded at Bryan, and extended his hand for a shake. “Glad you guys could make it.”

“Dude,” Bryan all but breathed as he shook Dave’s hand, “a pleasure, literally— I am _such_ a fan.”

“He is,” Karkat confirmed, twisting his mouth in an attempt to telepathically communicate to Dave that he knew Bryan was embarrassing, and that Karkat himself would not be contributing to the embarrassment by adding praise.

But Dave just smiled. “Thanks, man. You never know how these small shows are gonna go. Glad to hear it was a good time.”

“Hell yeah,” Bryan said. “A lot better than spending the night at home watching Cheers.”

“Well, hey.” Dave shrugged, looking from Bryan back to Karkat. “If that’s all you’ve got planned tonight, I was maybe gonna meet some people at Julius’s. You’re welcome to come along if you’re up for it.”

“Sure!” Bryan said. “Julius, don’t know it.”

“No?” Dave said mildly. “It’s one of the gay bars up on West 10th, I thought you two might’ve....”

For a second, the room froze. Karkat blinked.

“Oh!” said Bryan. He laughed nervously, then paused again. Karkat could see the calculation happening on his face, and hoped the same thing wasn’t occurring quite so transparently on his own. “Uh, not really, my. Scene.”

Dave raised his eyebrows, one corner of his mouth quirked up. “Shit, dude, sorry. I figured you guys were, like....”

Karkat’s brain, which had stalled out a few sentences back, suddenly came back online. He gave a short bark of laughter, then clamped his hand over his mouth.

“Fuck,” he said, lowering his hand. “No. We’re not, uh, no.”

“My bad.” Dave was still smiling, but his eyebrows had scrunched and he looked inquisitive, curious. “I’m not like, the world’s greatest at reading things.”

He said it to Karkat, low and almost apologetic, and Karkat frowned.

“I’ll come,” he said abruptly. “If you’re still going. I’m in.”

* * *

They didn’t, in the end, make it to Julius’s.

“Didn’t you have friends you were gonna meet?” Karkat asked as he and Dave walked up MacDougal Street, shoulders hunched against the chill.

“Eh,” Dave hedged. “To be honest, man, they’re not really my friends. Buddy of mine invited me to go out for her friend’s birthday, which is like, one too many degrees of separation for me to care about going or not going. Kinda just didn’t feel like it.”

Karkat thought about saying something like, _well it’s too bad we let Bryan dip, in that case_. Bryan had awkwardly excused himself as soon as they’d all made it out of the Comedy Cellar, something about an early meeting the next day, but Karkat knew he was really just wigged out about going to a gay bar after being confused for Karkat’s lover by a famous comedian. Not that Bryan wasn’t a good guy about that sort of thing, as far as Karkat could tell; it’s just that he was also, apparently, the kind of guy who spent his evenings watching Cheers with the wife. Anyway, the truth was that Karkat didn’t really think it was too bad that he’d left, so he didn’t bother saying so.

Of course, what Bryan’s absence meant, in an immediate sense, was that Karkat was now alone with Dave Strider, the rest of the night stretching out dauntingly before them. Given the particulars of the situation, Karkat thought he was keeping it together remarkably well. It was comfortable, almost, just falling into step with him as they bypassed Washington Square Park, listening to him recount his past experiences with heckling and (though Karkat had trouble believing it) stage fright.

“I’m serious, bro,” Dave said, thrusting his shitty beer can into the air for emphasis, once they finally settled in a bar. “When I was first starting out, like, it wasn’t uncommon for me to puke backstage before a set.” They had wound up at a divey little place with framed pictures of baseball players on the wall. Soft rock Christmas carols hummed over the speakers, punctuated by the gentle clack of pool balls in the next room.

They had only found one open seat at the bar when they walked in, but Dave had insisted he was always too keyed-up after a show to sit down anyway. He was standing in front of Karkat while Karkat sat backwards on the bar stool, holding his drink with both hands and trying not to grin like a moron. The place had cleared a little by now, and the seat next to Karkat was finally empty, but Dave did seem happy on his feet, laughing and talking with his hands.

“The key is not to think about it,” he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger. “It’s like— like going to the gym. I can do it if I just go. But if I start thinking about it, no way is it happening.”

Karkat snorted into his Manhattan. It had been a while since he’d had more than two drinks in a night, and he was feeling flushed in his face and neck, comfortable and happy and not sure if it was the booze or something else. “Okay, hold on,” he said, miming with his free hand like he was taking notes. “The pros say, quit thinking.”

“What’d it ever do for the species? We were much happier when we were rolling around in the mud.”

“Pros… say… lie down… eat dirt.” Karkat put down his invisible pen with a flourish. “Can’t wait to sell the transcript of this whole conversation to a shitty magazine.”

“It’s so cute you don’t even know what the shitty magazines are called,” Dave said in a voice Karkat tried not to identify as fond. “Hey, though. You still haven’t told me if you liked the set.”

“Didn’t get enough pats on the head from Bryan?”

Dave drained his beer and leaned forward, reaching around Karkat to set the empty can on the bar. Their forearms brushed against each other, and Karkat could feel faint body heat under Dave’s sleeve. “I want a pat on the head from you,” Dave said.

“I’m probably not the person to ask.”

“You are too. I wanna know what you think. It’s new stuff, still getting workshopped. So all the more reason to tell me if it’s unfunny horseshit.”

“You saw me laughing.”

“Yeah, but.” Dave’s smile was bright. “I have this feeling, like, I bet it’d be fun to hear you say it.”

Karkat groaned. “You’re an only child, aren’t you?”

Dave threw back his head to laugh. “My god,” he said. “That’s worse than someone guessing your sign.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a Sagittarius, too.”

“Fuck! Fuck, yeah, dude! You got some Harry Houdini shit goin’ on here?”

Karkat snorted. “If you add this to your set I will kill you.”

Dave just grinned at him. One of his dreads curled delicately around his ear, and Karkat wondered what it might feel like to touch. “Speaking of which,” Karkat said, “I’m back to giving you feedback now because this horoscope shit is too embarrassing— it was also very messy and weird. And not what I was expecting. From googling you.”

“Ah.” Dave ran a hand along his jaw, his face somewhere between a grin and a grimace. “Makes sense, I guess.” His mouth twisted, and then he looked at Karkat, frowning. “Hold that thought.” He leaned forward, resting one elbow on the bar while his other hand alighted on Karkat’s shoulder. He ordered another drink from the bartender, then glanced over at Karkat with raised eyebrows, but Karkat just shook his head, raising his still half-full Manhattan. He tried to ignore the small pang of disappointment when Dave leaned back out of his space, hand sliding off his shoulder.

“If I let you in on a little secret, will you promise not to tell?” Dave’s voice was low and the corners of his mouth were slightly turned up.

“Fuck no,” said Karkat, but he was leaning in too. “I don’t know what kind of perverted shit you want me to cover for.”

Dave laughed. “Well, I trust you anyway.”

“Don’t. I was an RA in college. The impulse to turn you in might be too strong for me.”

“I bet you were a cool RA, though. Letting the kids keep their bongs.”

“Shut the fuck up, I did not,” Karkat said, punching Dave’s arm lightly. “Anyway. Tell me your big secret.”

“Right.” Dave coughed. “Ha. Well. For most of my career I didn’t, uh. I wasn’t the one writing most of the jokes. I had this agent, when I was first starting out, she’d say my delivery was great, but my subject matter was, like. How’d she put it? Dogshit. So we, you know, we worked something out. I mean, a lot of comics do it, you might be surprised,” he added, not quite defensively, but almost. “And honestly, I was pretty happy with it that way. You know, the thing now is everyone wants comics to be personal, but at the time, I was like—” He laughed humorlessly. “I was like, yeah, no thanks. So it kinda just felt like someone was giving me an out. Thanks, man,” he said to the bartender, leaning past Karkat again to grab his whiskey ginger.

“So what you’re telling me,” Karkat said slowly, watching Dave take a long sip, “is that the stuff I saw on YouTube was the work of a hack.” He would not bring up Roast me, Daddy. He would _not_.

“Basically!” Dave said, sloshing his drink a bit as he gesticulated. “Basically, yes. I’m not proud to admit it, but there it is. But anyway, I fired that agent like six months ago. Big deal for me! And I’ve been working on my own stuff since then, so. That was what you saw tonight.”

Karkat swirled his drink slowly. “Well, like I said. It was weird and messy, and I liked it. I definitely liked it a lot better than some of the older stuff I saw. And, I mean, I don’t know shit. But that’s probably not a bad place to be, right? The audience was into it. Just, you know. Tighten up the part with the worm, please.”

Dave grinned at him and looked away, like he didn’t want to show how pleased he was, and Karkat felt a wave of relief wash over him. He tapped his finger against his glass nervously.

“Why me?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation.

Dave twitched, opened his mouth a little. Hastily, Karkat clarified, “Why’d you want a pat on the head from me?”

Dave grinned down into his glass before taking a sip. The stool on Karkat’s left was still empty, and Dave finally swung a long leg over it and sat down. Karkat’s leg twitched when Dave’s knee brushed his, but then he relaxed, and their knees stayed pressed together, just slightly.

“I guess,” Dave said slowly, running his finger along the rim of his glass, “I guess I just knew, like, that you wouldn’t just tell me what I wanted to hear?” He threw Karkat a sideway look, and grinned crookedly before glancing away again. “I knew, like, whether you thought it was good or bad, your opinion would mean more. I dunno why. Kinda felt like I was up there telling jokes just to you, in a way. And if you laughed, I was doing good. I know that sounds corny as hell, but....” Karkat watched Dave’s throat as he took another sip, eyes lingering on his Adam’s apple.

Over the speakers, Darlene Love was crooning, begging her baby to come home. “ _’Cause I remember when you were here, and all the fun we had last year_.” A pleasurable shiver ran up the back of Karkat’s neck.

“Fuck, this song rocks,” Dave said. “They should do Christmas karaoke, shouldn’t they? That’d clean up.”

“Hey,” Karkat said, swallowing tightly. “What makes you think all that? You don’t— I mean, you don’t even fucking know me.” He meant it as a statement, but his voice went up at the end, unintentionally turning it into another question.

“Hm,” Dave said, not looking at him. He rested both elbows on the bar, licked his lips. “Okay, see. You know what ylang-ylang smells like?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ylang-ylang? Like, a plant? I used to know a woman who wore it, and god, it smelled so good, I couldn’t figure out why I liked it so much.”

“Is this a bit? Can you answer questions in a straight line?”

“Nah. Anyway, I liked it so much. And then finally I visited my folks, hadn’t seen them in over a year, and fuck, it was my cousin’s perfume. Like, duh. It was that simple.”

“Okay,” said Karkat. “So?”

Dave turned back to him. “So, I don’t know. I know I don’t know you. But also. It kinda feels like I do.”

Karkat paused, taking a steadying breath. “Uh, I don’t think.... Does that…. analogy work?”

“Maybe not. I was dropped down the cellar stairs a few times as a kid. You have a right to know.”

Karkat huffed softly. He thought, for one moment, of Dave taking the stage before he had a chance to think about it; about the bravery involved with leaping before you looked, just trusting that you’d land. He thought about it for one beat, then swallowed the thought, and said, “I feel that, too.”

Dave’s shades did a quick search of his face before dropping back to the bar. The Darlene Love song faded out, transitioning into a smooth pop cover of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”Someone in the pool room cheered.

Dave took a final drink from his glass and put it down on the bar. “I gotta go home, Karkat,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Not to be presumptuous, but. Are you coming with me?”

“Oh,” Karkat said again. And then, “Yes.”

* * *

They took a cab to Dave’s place in the East Village. The ride was utterly silent but for the driver’s podcast, a few guys bantering in a language Karkat didn’t know. He kept his eyes fixed out the window as they sped along East 8th, but when he chanced a look over at Dave, it was to find his gaze on him.

The apartment was on the third floor of a brick walk-up near Tompkins Square Park. As he followed Dave up the stairs, Karkat tried to seriously assess his own level of drunkenness and found that he couldn’t reliably do so. Never in his life had he felt such an acute combination of delirium and clearheadedness, all of it bound together by the jumble of nerves coiled in his stomach, weighing it down.

They didn’t speak as Dave fumbled with his keys, and they didn’t touch as he led Karkat inside, flipping on a floor lamp that cast the apartment in soft warm light.

Dave’s place was smaller than Karkat would have thought, but clearly warm and lived in. It opened up on a living room with two squishy looking loveseats, a bookshelf, and a coffee table strewn haphazardly with papers and an open laptop. Karkat noticed a large pillow lying flat on the hardwood floor by the coffee table, squashed into submission as if someone had been using it as a makeshift seat. Something about the sight hit him as strangely touching.

“Nice place,” he said, to have something to say. Framed movie posters hung on the wall, mostly titles he’d never heard of. Glancing around, something on the bookshelf caught his eye: a framed picture of what looked like a twenty-something-year-old Dave in front of a brick wall, grinning widely, his arms flung around two laughing young women with buck teeth and wild hair.

Karkat stepped to the shelf and picked up the picture. “Friends?” He asked, his back still to Dave.

“Yeah.” Dave was closer than he had thought, and Karkat shivered slightly. “June and Jade. Back when we were all trying to, you know, be comedians. They were both way funnier than me.”

“Were?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m sure they still are. But stuff changed, you know. The way it does.”

Karkat nodded. He brought his hand up to the picture and touched the younger Dave’s face with a fingertip, smiling crookedly. “Shit,” he said quietly.

He felt Dave’s hand, then, featherlight on the small of his back, echoing his own touch. Karkat took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and placed the picture back on the shelf. Then he leaned into the touch. Dave’s arm snaked around him, and Karkat turned and buried his face in Dave’s neck.

“Hey.” Dave’s surprised huff of laughter was warm in Karkat’s ear. Karkat just wrapped his arms around Dave’s middle and breathed him in.

“Hi.”

Dave’s lips were soft against his temple. “Have you, um. You’ve done this before, right?”

Karkat nodded. “Been a long time, though. Years.”

“Wow,” Dave said, and Karkat could feel his grin. “Big ego moment for me, being the one to get you back in the game.” Karkat stomped on his toe. “Seriously though,” Dave said through laughter, pulling back a little to look down at him. “We don’t— obviously we don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna, I mean, even just this is fine. I’m game for whatever.”

The hand that wasn’t holding him close was on Karkat’s face, thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “Dave,” Karkat said. “Can you just fucking kiss me?”

“I,” said Dave. “Yeah.”

He let go of Karkat’s waist, his hand coming to rest on the back of his neck. Still cupping Karkat’s face in his other hand, Dave leaned in, his mouth soft and just barely open, and closed it gently against the corner of Karkat’s own. He landed another kiss on his cheek, another on his eyebrow. Then Karkat groaned, and Dave laughed, and kissed him for real.

Karkat exhaled heavily through his nose and stepped backwards, his hands in Dave’s shirt to drag him along. They kissed hard against the wall, Karkat’s brain blanking out with embarrassing alacrity when Dave pulled him closer by the chin. Karkat put his hand to Dave’s jaw, sliding it up into his dreads, carding his fingers through them over and over.

Had it been that long? Maybe it had just never been like this before. Karkat felt warm and cocooned, his heart pushing out against his chest, like it wanted to be touched in the same way. Maybe that was just the feeling of being held.

In Dave’s bedroom, naked from the waist up, Karkat allowed himself to be pushed onto his back. Dave settled between his legs, heavy body pinning Karkat down. His mouth was hot on Karkat’s neck as they moved against each other.

“Tell me what you want,” Dave murmured, voice rough in Karkat’s ear. “ _Anything_ , fuck, anything you want.”

Karkat groaned, wrapping his legs around Dave’s waist, feeling Dave’s dick hard against his own through their jeans. “I don’t know,” he said, breathless. “I don’t know.”

Dave’s fingers were on his throat, the skin so sensitive that Karkat laid his head back, exposing more, wanting Dave to know. He closed his eyes, breathing hard, and when Dave’s fingers brushed his lips he sucked one of them desperately into his mouth.

“God,” Dave breathed. He’d taken his shades off, and his brown eyes were dark and heavy-lidded behind them, expressive. He sucked in a sharp breath as Karkat curled his tongue around his finger. “Karkat— can I fuck you? Please.”

“Yeah, _fuck_.”

Dave’s finger left a trail of spit down Karkat’s chin as he slipped it out of his mouth. He wriggled down the bed, Karkat dragging his fingernails along his back until they ended up tangled in Dave’s hair.

Dave pressed a kiss to his belly before fumbling with his belt buckle. Karkat lifted his hips to help Dave pull his jeans and underwear off. He hardly had time to feel vulnerable about his nakedness before Dave made a low sound in his throat, and then he was sliding a finger inside him.

“Fuck,” Karkat gasped, writhing, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

Dave reached up, grasped Karkat’s forearm and drug his hand away from his face. “I wanna hear you.”

Karkat fisted his hands in Dave’s hair and let him hear.

* * *

Karkat woke up under a tangled grey sheet, and, more pressingly, under Dave’s heavy arm. He worked his jaw gingerly for a moment, then caught a glance at the light pouring in through the slats in the venetian blinds, and started.

He had a meeting at eleven— too late now to go home and shower, he’d have to make do. The knowledge of what had happened the night before was pushing against Karkat’s throat, begging for attention, but it would have to wait. Carefully, he rolled out from under Dave’s arm and eased himself out of bed, gathering up his pants and socks.

In a drawer in the bathroom he found a spare toothbrush and a washcloth, and scrubbed at himself frantically for a moment until he was satisfied that he looked tired and disheveled, but at least not, well. At least not recently fucked.

He sidestepped Dave’s t-shirt on the living room floor and found his own discarded button-down on the coffee table, silently thanking god for casual Fridays. As he put on his watch, he caught sight of the framed picture on the bookshelf, and his stomach turned over.

How much had he revealed last night? He remembered wrapping his arms around Dave’s neck and arching his back like he wanted every part of himself in contact with every part of Dave. Had he moaned his name? Had he said please? Karkat flushed and pushed the thought away.

He realized his phone was still on Dave’s bedside table, and immediately followed up with the secondary realization that he was nervous to reenter the room. At the bedroom doorway, Karkat hesitated; but Dave showed no signs of waking, so finally he crossed the room quietly and picked up his phone.

Dave had rolled onto his stomach, his bare left arm thrown across the bed. The sight of his broad hand on the pillow where Karkat’s head had been made Karkat’s mouth feel dry. He shook his head gently and took a step backward, but Dave, perhaps sensing the movement, stirred.

He turned his head groggily against the pillow, squinting up at Karkat. He grinned at him sleepily.

“Hey,” he said, voice croaky with sleep. “What’re you doing?”

Karkat’s stomach somersaulted again. “Going to work,” he said.

“Whaaat?” Dave rolled onto his side, reaching his arm up toward Karkat as if to pull him back down. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean. It's Friday.”

Dave frowned at him. Karkat was pretty sure it was just for effect, but he still didn’t like it. “Blow it off,” Dave said.

Karkat’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t blow it off. You know about meetings? I have those.”

“I know about meetings,” Dave said petulantly. “Just didn’t know the world would end if you missed one. It’s Christmas.”

“It’s December twentieth.”

“Don’t you get, like, sick days?”

Karkat shut his mouth, jaw clicking uncomfortably. “Let me be more clear. I can’t blow it off, and I don’t wanna blow it off. I have a life, asshole.”

“Some life,” Dave muttered.

Karkat’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay,” he said. “Fuck you very much.”

“Hey, Kat, c’mon,” Dave said, like he was dealing with someone unreasonable.

Karkat’s heart stuttered almost painfully at the nickname, and he clenched his fists in response. “Look, I know my life isn’t as, as shiny and exciting as yours, but some of us need to go out and earn a living, okay?”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean,” Dave said darkly, sitting up and reaching for his shades on the bedside table. The blanket over him slipped down into his lap, and Karkat’s eyes dropped to the dark hair on his chest before darting away.

“It means I have responsibilities. And I can’t just lie in bed all day.”

“Then don’t.”

“Fine.”

He waited for a moment, expecting Dave to fire back, but he didn’t. He just sat on the bed and looked at him.

Karkat turned around and left, closing the bedroom door firmly behind him.

* * *

The anger mostly dissipated by lunchtime, leaving behind a muddy jumble of sadness, embarrassment, and confusion. By the time he left the office it had all coalesced into a great stormcloud of self-loathing that followed him home and stayed hanging over his head all weekend.

Dave didn’t text him— of course he didn’t, after Karkat basically told him to go fuck himself and stormed out. Karkat didn’t text either. He was trying hard not to think about the whole thing: when he thought about the sex, he cringed remembering how he left; and when he thought about the way he’d left, he cringed remembering the sex. Not thinking about it sounded like a good solution, except that trying to restrict his own thoughts made them feel that much more illicit, and, therefore, that much more shameful.

There was no reason to feel like shit, he tried to tell himself, pushing his cart down the aisle at Stop & Shop on Sunday, preparing for the blizzard that was supposed to be rolling in. He and Dave swam in crazily different circles. Karkat was here with all the other miserable adults, buying gallons of water and batteries and two bottles of red wine, the emergency supplies. Dave was probably lying around on his loveseat, watching TV and waiting for his assistant or whoever to drop off expensive takeout sushi, which would doubtlessly be gobbled down without so much as an appreciative glance, and which would then give him worms. Karkat shoved his shopping cart against its sticky wheel vindictively.

Of course it was never gonna be anything more than a one night stand, and people didn’t need to feel beholden to their one night stands. There must be plenty of people who did that all the time— met someone, had some fun talking, spent a while gauging interest, and, when the moment presented itself, hooked up. Karkat had just made it easy for Dave by being a sucker. Which was fine. It was just that, if hookups left you feeling lonelier than you felt before, he really didn’t see the point.

Neither of them had done anything wrong, because there were no stakes, and it didn’t matter. That line of thought should’ve helped, too, but instead it led to a sickening vision of Dave in some other bar, saying to some other guy, “Yeah, you should’ve seen the dude I took home last week. Told me he hadn’t slept with a guy in years. He kept rubbing up on me like a starving cat, and then freaked out in the morning. I almost felt sorry for him.”

Which was an extremely dreary thing to imagine, after confessing whatever the fuck Karkat had confessed. That he felt like he knew Dave. That he liked his weird sense of humor. In retrospect, those felt equally damning.

* * *

Karkat woke up the morning of Christmas Eve to what most New Yorkers would brazenly classify as a blizzard.

By lunchtime, soon after getting off the phone with his cousin, Kanaya, Karkat was sitting in sweatpants at his kitchen table, eating reheated gyoza and watching the snow pelt down outside his window. It’s A Wonderful Life played on his tiny TV in the background, the best gesture toward the season he’d managed to come up with. Maybe not the greatest holiday, but he’d had worse. At least he didn’t have to make small talk or pretend to be having a good time.

An hour later he had caved and broken into a bottle of red wine. He was lying on the sofa, sipping from his stemless glass and placidly allowing It’s a Wonderful Life to fade into A Christmas Story, when he heard his phone ding. He frowned; lately the only texts he’d been getting were automated pickup reminders from the pharmacy, and he’d been sure to get all his refills before the storm hit.

He reached for his phone, sliding it across the coffee table towards him, and glanced at the lock screen.

“Shit!”

With a clatter, he dropped the phone to the hardwood floor and scrambled to pick it up again. The text message was from Dave Claus.

_remind me which street in astoria you live on_

Karkat stared at the screen. Then he put the phone face-down on his stomach and took a slow swallow from his wine glass. He kept sipping until the glass was empty, at which point he set it on the floor, picked the phone up again, and responded, before he could stop himself:

**I NEVER TOLD YOU THAT.**

The response came almost immediately.

_oops_

_ok hows this_

_which street in astoria do you live on_

**WHO’S ASKING?**

_santa so he can deliver your coal tonight_

Karkat stood up and walked quickly to the kitchen. He opened the fridge, looked inside, and closed it again. Then he went back to the couch, poured himself another glass of wine, and opened his phone.

**TELL HIM I LIVE ON THE 29TH NEAR THE CORNER OF THE 30TH.**

_shit_

After a few minutes had passed without a follow-up, Karkat made himself set his phone down again. He went to the bathroom, got out some Clorox wipes, and started scrubbing down the perfectly clean sink. Then he went back to the living room and checked his phone. Nothing.

Ten minutes later he had watered every plant in the apartment, had a few more nervous sips of wine, taken an antacid just in case, and had pulled half the contents of his kitchen cupboards off their shelves to double-check the expiration dates. He was frowning at a bag of dried apricots when his phone finally dinged again.

Karkat was across the apartment instantly, grappling for his phone.

_ok which number pls_

**...**

**18**

_ok which floor pls_

**DAVE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING.**

_santa needs to know which window to climb thru since you dont have a fireplace i assume_

**OH MY FUCKING GOD.**

**2nd**

_thank god_

_left or right side of building_

_nvm just gonna go for it_

A moment later, Karkat heard a dull thunk on the living room window. Glancing over at it, he saw a splatter of snow sliding off the pane.

“Jesus,” he said out loud, going over to pry the window open.

He was met with a blast of cold air and sideways-falling snow— and the sight of Dave fucking Strider, standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the teeming snow, wearing a full green and gold Party City elf costume, a portable speaker hoisted above his head. When he caught sight of Karkat, Dave let out a whoop and pressed a button. The speaker crackled to life, cutting through the whistle of wind and snow.

“Ho ho ho! Ho ho ho! We are Santa’s elves!”

Karkat stared. Across the street another window opened, and an elderly man pulled his shutters aside and stared, too.

On the sidewalk, half obscured by snow, Dave was doing something that could maybe be described as a dance, kicking his legs and shaking his feet, turning in a circle, and making one aborted attempt at a rhythmic squat.

“We work hard all day!” the speaker shrieked. “But our work is play!”

Dave kicked out one leg, slid on a patch of ice, and fell on his ass.

“Fuck!” Karkat pulled his head out of the window and ran for the door.

At the bottom of his apartment building’s staircase, Karkat heaved open the front door and swore again, the cold hitting him like a thousand tiny daggers.

Dave was wincing but back on his feet, knocking snow off his green polyester pants with his bare hands.

“What is wrong with you?” Karkat half-shouted at him, wrapping his arms around himself and squinting through the snow. “Where are your gloves? Where is your coat?”

Dave grinned at him sheepishly. “Hi.”

The portable speaker, on the ground now, continued to blast: “Santa knows who’s good! Do the things you should!” Dave bent down gingerly to pick it up and switch it off.

“Get in here,” Karkat demanded. “It’s a goddamn blizzard, fuckhead.”

He marched Dave up the stairs and into his apartment, the door still wide open.

“Shit,” he said, looking at the open window, where a sizable pile of snow had blown onto the floor and was being quickly melted by the radiator. On the TV, Ralphie Parker was sitting on Santa’s lap, stupidly nodding yes to a football. Karkat muted the TV, then crossed the room and forced the window shut, hyper-aware of Dave behind him, waiting for him to turn around.

Finally, he did. Dave was pink-faced and windswept, wearing a grim, tight-lipped smile.

“Hi,” Dave said, and then winced. “I already said that.”

“How embarrassing for you.”

Dave laughed and turned around slowly, his arms in the air. “You like it? I thought you were into this look.”

“Oh, yeah.” Karkat walked to the couch and sank down onto it, looking up at Dave as coolly as he could. “The only reason I’ve ever worn an elf costume. My fucking passion for fashion.”

Dave lowered his arms, giving Karkat a funny kind of smile. “I am embarrassed,” he said. “Not about this, but.”

Karkat swallowed. “You should be embarrassed about this,” he managed. “You look very stupid.”

“I know.” Dave shrugged. “But. Like I said.”

Karkat raised an eyebrow at him, and Dave went on.

“Look, I know you don’t have any Christmas plans— you said you were Muslim, right?— and I just wanted to, I dunno, man. I wanted to apologize. I was being a dick before.”

“Yeah,” said Karkat. “I am. And you were.” But immediately, a part of him was in revolt. He was experiencing the weirdest sensation, like phantom arms were shooting out of his shoulders, trying to reach for Dave whether the rest of him liked it or not.

It would feel very good to forgive him.

“What are you doing here?” he said instead.

“Trying to apologize.”

“I know, but—” Karkat gestured at him broadly. “What are you doing here?”

Dave’s mouth twisted. “Man, I just don’t wanna fuck around or play stupid games.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Costume notwithstanding. Can I sit down?”

Automatically, Karkat nodded, and then realized it meant Dave was going to sit next to him. Sure enough, Dave flopped down on the far side of the couch, one leg bent on the cushion and the other foot on the floor.

“You could like, give me a word of encouragement any time,” he said.

“I want to hear what you’re gonna say,” said Karkat.

Dave flung his head back dramatically. “Fine,” he said, and picked it back up. “Okay, listen. I think this is very simple. Not that you don’t have reason to be annoyed,” he added hastily. “But I know how I feel, right? I’m not on the fence about anything. So if it’s the same for you, maybe we can just be honest with each other, and then it’s fine, right?”

Karkat’s wine glass was still on the coffee table, and he picked it up, swirling it anxiously. “How do you feel,” he asked.

“Oh, dude!” Dave laughed a little. “I like you!”

Karkat tried to hide his sharp inhale by taking a hasty sip of wine. He put the glass back down with a clack. “Didn’t fucking act like it.”

Dave let out a long breath, and for a moment Karkat got that weird feeling, like when you’re holding the same subway pole as a stranger and can’t tell whose hand is whose, like Dave had exhaled Karkat’s breath. “Like I said,” Dave muttered. “I don’t wanna play any stupid games, and get all, neither did you. But, neither did you, dude. So. Even-steven.”

Karkat looked away and rubbed a hand over his mouth, his face prickling with heat as he remembered the way he’d stormed out. “I was a dick, too,” he said, finally.

“Yeah, you were,” Dave said, but he was grinning, just a little. He’d taken his shades off, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

Karkat stood up and went to the kitchen, where the counter was covered in drygoods. He could hear Dave following behind him.

“Preparing for the apocalypse?”

“Something like that.” Karkat opened the cupboard and took out his only other wine glass. “You want a drink?”

Dave paused, then said, “Yeah.”

Back in the living room, Karkat sat down on the floor instead of the couch. Dave joined him and wordlessly accepted his glass of wine.

Karkat leaned against the couch and turned to the muted movie, watching Ralphie’s dad shout furiously at the neighbors’ bloodhounds.

“You always watch movies this way?” Dave asked.

“Yeah,” Karkat said. “The human voice makes me sick. That’s why you and I could never work.”

“Okay,” Dave said. “Don’t be mean to me. Like, I can hear you’re joking, but I’ve laid myself on the line and now you’re just toying with me. Sicko.”

Surprising himself, Karkat laughed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Dave stretched his legs out on the floor, crossing his ankles and clasping his hands in his lap, and waited.

Karkat pushed his hands through his hair, took a deep breath. Finally, he said, “When we started talking in that mall bathroom, I thought you were the most annoying person I’d ever met.”

“Dude, I said don’t be mean!”

“Shut up, it’s about to get really nice, I promise.”

Dave squinted at him. “Continue.”

“You were _so_ fucking annoying,” Karkat said. “But also. Even right then. I didn’t want you to quit talking to me. I wanted to talk and talk.” He set his wine glass on the coffee table. “It’s fucking stupid how much I like you,” he said. “I mean, even when we were just texting— I spent two weeks, like, grinning idiotically at my phone like a teenager. I, um. I was worried, I think, after we, I mean, I— I never do that kind of thing, but I didn’t know how often you did. And I thought I’d be okay with it, you know, just being a one night stand, but....” He trailed off, bringing one hand up to rub at his opposite arm.

Dave leaned towards him and put an arm carefully around his shoulders. “For the record,” he said, “I don’t do that kind of thing very often anymore. I’m kinda boring. And I mean, you were never just— just some guy to me. Guess there’s not really a non-creepy way to communicate that in the moment. Except to say that, like, I feel like I know you, yada yada, insert some analogy about my cousin’s perfume, whatever the fuck I said.”

“What, that’s not your go-to pick-up line?”

“I guess it should be, shouldn’t it? One hundred percent success rate so far.”

“How does that compare to your method of getting my number?”

“Dude, Karkat,” Dave said seriously. “You think I’ve ever had to be that creative before? Usually I’m just out with it! But it turns out Santaland is a desolately sexless environment. Boner-killers literally everywhere you turn. I really had to persevere.”

“Wow,” Karkat said, and laid his head, tentatively, on Dave’s shoulder. “Sounds like it was really hard for you.”

“Yeah, _hard_ for you!”

“Oh my fucking god.”

“I mean, once I got home. Not around the— I wasn’t tryna get arrested.”

“I got it.”

Dave fell silent for a moment. When Karkat picked up his head to look at him, it was to find him gazing at the snowstorm through the window, eyes crinkled, his free hand over his mouth.

“What are you thinking?” Karkat asked.

Dave blinked and lowered his hand, turning back to Karkat. His eyes were soft, and he was smiling like he couldn’t help it. Karkat watched Dave’s throat as he swallowed, feeling a little bit heady.

“I’m just thinking,” Dave said, “I’m really glad you like me.”

Karkat felt himself flush immediately, and dropped his forehead back onto Dave’s shoulder to hide his face. Dave wrapped both arms around Karkat and squeezed gently, landing a brief kiss on the top of his head. Slowly, Karkat extracted his arms and folded them around Dave in turn.

They stayed like that for a moment, enveloping each other on the floor. Then Dave lifted his head from where it had been resting on Karkat’s and unwound his arms.

“I don’t think you ever told me what you were doing for the holidays,” Karkat said, frowning. “You should— I mean, you’ll get snowed in here before too long.”

“Oh, well, I mean. I’m mostly Jewish.”

“Oh.”

“Just one more thing I didn’t mention when I got the call to be Kris Kringle. But yeah, Hanukkah ended weeks ago. And my fam’s in the Bahamas right now anyway, so, uh. No plans.”

Karkat looked up at him, feeling a grin spreading across his face.

“I, um,” Dave said. “I wouldn’t mind getting snowed in with you, to be perfectly honest.”

“No?”

“I mean, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

“You sure like inviting yourself over, don’t you.”

“I’m not inviting myself over. I’m fishing for an invite. Like a vampire.”

“Okay,” Karkat said. His smile felt out of control, making his whole face numb. “You’re invited.”

Dave laughed, a short puff of air out his nose. He combed his fingers gently through Karkat’s hair, and the sensation sent a spark down Karkat’s spine.

“Good,” Dave was saying, “’cause I’ve already told Dancer and Prancer they can use your place to host their annual Christmas Eve drag show— oh.”

Karkat had swung his leg over and clambered into Dave’s lap before the words were out of his mouth. Dave looked up at him wide-eyed as Karkat held his face between his hands and said, very seriously, “No reindeer in the apartment, Strider. They’ll tear my Williams-Sonoma drapes with their fucking antlers.”

Dave blinked at him slowly. “That’s— that was—” he floundered, and then swallowed visibly. “I need to make out with you, like, now, please—”

Karkat lurched forward and kissed him hard enough to hurt, but he could feel Dave grinning against his mouth.

* * *

The storm lasted three days. In Karkat’s warm apartment, he and Dave ate easy food (packs of instant ramen, spinach and black bean pasta, handfuls of walnuts) and drank wine until it ran out, at which point they drank coffee. Dave retired the elf costume quickly and wore Karkat’s clothes, small on him but making it work. They went out once on the day after Christmas, when Karkat insisted on tramping through the snow to CVS to buy a little extra food and, for Dave, a pack of boxer briefs because as much as Karkat liked him, he wasn’t sure he liked him that much. And then they stayed in.

Karkat could’ve stayed that way forever— just the two of them, watching cheesy movies on the floor, or getting hot and heavy against the tiled wall of the shower, or lying in Karkat’s bed in comfortable silence and listening to the faint patter of snow against the windows. It was easier than he ever could have imagined to stay lazy and happy; to stay entwined on the couch while the hours slipped by unnoticed. But then the sky outside would grow dark, and they would get up, put the music on low, and go to the window to turn on the fairy lights.


End file.
